DG planning with amalgamation of economic and reliability considerations

• Optimal location for DG is found by coupling reliability and economic aspects.
• A combined performance index for reliability (ENS) and total cost (TC) is developed.
• Combined index helps in resolving trade-off between cost and reliability objectives.
• A new approach is developed to evaluate the optimal load that can be dispatched by DG.
• The proposed approach is applied to a 15-bus and 18-bus radial distribution system.

Distributed generation has been playing a vital role in dealing with issues related to distribution systems. This paper presents an approach which provides the distribution system operator with a set of solutions for DG placement to optimize reliability and total cost of power consumed by the distribution system. Optimal location of a Distributed Generator is evaluated based on the performance indices derived for reliability index and total cost of power consumed by the system. The proposed approach is applied to a 15-bus radial distribution system and a 18-bus radial distribution system and the results are analyzed.